


Crackfic: Heir to Command

by Archangel_Beth



Category: In Nomine
Genre: AU, Gen, crackfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-12-26 15:56:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18285524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Archangel_Beth/pseuds/Archangel_Beth
Summary: Nybbas was a Balseraph of Fate (Mercurian resonance), captured by the Angel of the Sword and taken to Archangel Uriel for redemption. Now, he's a Mercurian of Destiny, Angel of the Media, and Uriel is summoned to trial...One of many Nybbas-centric fics for Sariel.





	1. Heir to Command

* * *

Uriel stood defiantly in the center of the Seraphim Council, with his honor guard of Word-bound standing at attention at the edges of the floor. "This is a _waste of time_ ," he snarled. "Get it over with. The only way to win this is to be decisive, and cleanse the Marches before Hell realizes what we are doing to them."

The spokesangel from the other side was a Mercurian. "Lord Commander. What you're doing is... inappropriate."

The Malakite fanned his wings, outrage on his face. "Nybbas, I _redeemed_ you. How can you speak against me?"

"You released me to Destiny, Lord. And what you do... I cannot find objective reason for it. I'm _sorry_ , but you're _screwing up Heaven_."

Uriel's voice dropped low and dangerous. "Who says this?"

Nybbas held up a list. "Many Archangels and Council members, Lord Uriel. And I am among them. I'm _sorry_."

"Traitors," Uriel hissed, sounding much as the Seraph he had been. "Are there impurities in Heaven that Judgment cannot contain?!"

"Don't do this, Uriel," the Mercurian whispered. "Please."

"I am the Lord Commander! This is my order! I..." He broke off.

A Light filled the Mercurian's eyes, and a Voice spoke from his mouth, and when the whiteness and silence had faded, Uriel did not stand in the center of the Seraphim Council floor.

Instead, Nybbas, of the small Word of the Media... stood alone, his Superior's power flaring and filling the air around him with the scritching of pens, thumps and clatters, high whines of some unfamiliar song.

Yves murmured, and all heard, "Archangel of the Media."

The first of Purity to kneel was the Angel of the Sword. "Lord Commander," he said. "What are your orders?"


	2. Confessions in the Night

* * *

Nybbas, Archangel of the Media, Lord Commander of the Host, finds his second in command standing a lonely watch upon the Wall that circles the Eternal City. He's near the edges of dead Oannes' Domain, where infinite starlight lays itself across Heaven. The Light is present, of course, but seems more diffuse -- save where the stars glitter like sword-points, and pick out minute highlights upon the Sword's ebony wings.

"My Lord." Laurence goes to one knee in an easy motion. It's still disturbing to Nybbas, even though the other angel has been doing it since Uriel's... resignation.

"Please, Laurence." He reaches down. "You know you don't have to do that. You're the reason I'm _here_."

The Malakite does stand, at least. "God willed that it should be so, and all things happen for a reason, my Lord."

"All things." He sighs. "Such as you deciding to kidnap a Balseraph of Fate, Demon of Media, instead of killing it?"

That might be the trace of a smile. "Such as that, my Lord, yes."

"You still don't have to... to be so formal." Broken arm, broken leg, a deadly serious threat to cut his lying tongue from his lying head if he tried his resonance... _Why not just kill me and get it over with, bastard?_ he'd hissed. And gotten in return, _Because you could be **more** than this, and by God I'll not let you shirk that glory._ It hadn't been the words that had made Nybbas subside, wide-eyed -- not the words, so much as the heat in Laurence's voice, and the ragged, suppressed tears there as well.

"You are my Archangel now, by God's will, my Lord."

"And you're still the one who dragged me to it! You _don't_ have to be so formal. Look... Are you angry? That I took Uriel's place?"

Laurence looks out toward the infinite, his profile sword-sharp and his wings patches of starlessness in the pinpointed sky.

Nybbas gives him time to answer.

And finally, not looking away from whatever he contemplates, the Malakite says, "No. Not angry. A little... sad. Or confused. If nothing happens without reason, then... then my father was not acting _wrongly_ , but only as he had to do, for you to come into your own. Perhaps... it was the only honorable way, the only clean way, to bring him home to the Higher Heavens, where he could find true Purity. Or perhaps... he was doing a wrong thing, and it is God's will that you were there to take his position so that Heaven was not abandoned when he was drawn away from this tangle of grayness and impurities. But I... I don't know..."

Elohite resonance was already second nature to him before his elevation, along with Elohite calm. (Logic, logic, and perspective to counter the memories of lies that even he had believed.) The confusion in his companion's voice is deep in his soul, too, along with grief. And loneliness.

"You miss him." Not a bit of censure in his voice, or even in his heart. It had been so hard, to walk out onto the Council floor and confront the Archangel who'd redeemed him -- who'd taken out the rot of lies and Fate and made him clean, and pure, a gleaming gold thing with a choice that he'd never had before.

Laurence stays looking to the side for a moment, and then nods.

"Me too."

The Malakite blinks, and finally looks at Nybbas again. "I... I'm sorry..."

Nybbas holds out a hand. "Me, too."

Resonance was rarely wrong, but sometimes... the prediction could be shallow. Laurence takes his hand, yes, and then steps forward and wraps his arms around Nybbas' shoulders. "My father..."

Nybbas puts his own arms around the other angel's waist, and just nods.

And together, Archangel and Word-bound weep for a father and redeemer.


	3. Advisors

* * *

Nybbas, Archangel of the Media, Lord Commander of the Armies of God, has a great many people interested in ensuring that he does his job _right._ Of course, most of them being Word-bound, and Archangels, this means that they are all pushy, nosy, opinionated, and biased by their Words.

So is Nybbas, but he's spent long enough as an "Elo-Mercurian" in Destiny's service that he understands bias isn't always the best measure of a situation. So although his closest advisors are pale, with eyes of opal and half-lidded gray (the Lightning lord pacing a half-step behind Raphael, with only an occasional laconic comment upon matters), he does not shun the others. At the least, it's politically sound to listen to them, when he has time.

Michael is, of course, the best at tactics. He is also the most pushy. Nybbas has put his hand upon the desk and said, softly, "Michael, if God wanted you to be the final authority as Lord Commander, you would have been chosen instead. This decision is mine." The last sentence had been tinged with the Voice that had spoken through Media's lips, and both of them had stared across at each other, shaken.

Novalis appeals to his Mercurian nature, forgetting the Elohite one that he put on later, and is nearly as stubborn and pushy in her own way as Michael. Also insidious as ivy, and it takes many months before he realizes that he must tell her, "Lady of Flowers, I am a Friend of Man, yes. But I must know when violence is necessary, and turn my face away. There must be a balance."

Yves is only an advisor in the Socratic tradition, as he has ever been. Nybbas comes away from those conversations with bits of wisdom, sifted and seined from his own depths, but it's exhausting. (Even when he granted the Distinctions, it was always a questioning that led Nybbas to understand his own mind, and say that yes, he needed the ability. Yes, he needed to have that power and that responsibility. Yes, this was his worth. The reward is the answer, enough rope to hang himself, enough rope to save himself and human souls.)

The others have their own agendas, their own motives, their own politics that make even him tired, with his head buzzing. After a particularly grueling week, he tells the blackwinged shadow by his side that while he most definitely _does_ want Laurence to speak up if he thinks Nybbas is doing something stupid... hand him a cup of something alcoholic and caffeinated first, please? Blessedly, the Angel of the Sword both gave that the small smile it probably deserved, and the serious nod that Nybbas had barely dared to hope for.

The last to show up upon his doorstep -- by many months, surprisingly -- is Eli. He brings gifts with him, wine, cookies, and chocolates, wrapped in crinkled paper. (Later, Nybbas unfolds them to find sketches of his elevation, each one clearly discarded as unable to capture the full impact. Still, he presses them between book pages and keeps them.) No coffee, for which Nybbas mentally marks down his prior estimation of Eli's wisdom, but perhaps the wine (which is very good indeed) makes up for it.

Halfway through the bottle, though, there's been nothing but chit-chat and Mercurian banter that amuses Nybbas so much more with his habits of Elohite thought than it ever did in the early days of his redemption. The lack of seriousness, of agendas, makes him wary.

"Why _are_ you here?" he asks, when the bottle is down to a third.

"I have to have a reason?" Eli replies, with a white vagabond's grin and the wineglass almost glowing in his dark hand.

"It's not required, but it's traditional," Nybbas retorts.

"Even _Janus_?"

"He left when I told him it was traditional."

Eli laughs, and drinks, and is reaching for a cookie when Nybbas pokes him in the ribs. "Ow! Okay, okay! I just wanted to... talk to you. See what you were really like."

"I'm like Marc," Nybbas says, frankly. "I'll be whatever I have to be, in order to do this job." That's like Elohim, too, but he doesn't bother to remind anyone of that. Either they will recall, or they won't, and it's not necessary to harp on it, now that he has all the resonances.

"Hm." Eli nibbles at his cookie, and this time Nybbas lets him think, judging that he's trying to say something with just the perfect words.

Nybbas is not going to object to perfect words. Not after being with Destiny so long.

"Marc's got a core that's really him. Just like you have a core that's really you. And... You _do_ have that core. I dunno if I can see all of it, but I think it's there. You understand responsibility."

Nybbas sips his own wine, and thinks of the unbearable blinding blackness of Uriel's wings, and the way it had felt to shed his skin like any mortal snake, yearning not toward truth (as one might think a Balseraph of Fate would), but toward the interconnected relations of glorious, fascinating humanity. The lies that made the truths, the truths that could be twisted to lies. Complexity, that made his head buzz and his golden wings tremble, even after he clung -- tiny and bewildered -- to Uriel's hand as a reliever. He thought of how desperate he had been to make a difference, to undo what he'd done as a Liar. How he couldn't try to put it out of his head, even as a remade creature whose peers had little more important in their minds than what they wanted to fledge as.

_I want to make it better,_ he'd told the old man.

_Well. That's always good. What can you do?_

"Responsibility is important." It's a neutral enough thing to say, and there are so few words that can convey what he feels.

" _Personal_ responsibility, too. I think you... really get it. That there's stuff that you just have to do, just have to fix, for yourself sometimes. Even if it's not what you thought your Word was meant to do."

Nybbas might let his gaze sharpen, but he doesn't have to. He doesn't even have to set aside the buzz of the very good wine, to spin off a tiny part of his mind to ponder this. "That's important to you."

Eli looks into his wineglass, and clearly into his own memories of things that have no words but _Oh_. "Yeah. Yeah, it really is."

As they finish the bottle, quietly enjoying each other's company, Nybbas thinks that he will never understand the older Archangel's path, or how he got to his beliefs and agendas, and that Eli will never figure out how six eyes could turn to white-feathered wings -- but at least on this level where words are inadaquate, they can understand each other.


	4. (Author's Afterword)

When I originally posted this to Livejournal, I was asked how a Balseraph turned into a Mercurian. I wrote:

> Via a rare loophole of essentially being busted back to relieverness. Mostly used as an escape hatch for PCs who redeem and don't want to be their opposite Choir; the in-game explanation is that the PC was essentially force-fledged by a Prince and didn't really _choose_ to be that Band. In this case, this Nybbas was a "Balcurian" of Fate -- a Balseraph of Fate with the Mercurian resonance. So when he redeemed, he wanted to be _Mercurian_ , not Seraph.
> 
> Besides, this is crackfic. It's more cracktastic that way.


End file.
